


The Lovers

by katonline



Series: South Downs [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Minor Character Death, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-09-24 11:11:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20357527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katonline/pseuds/katonline
Summary: Time hurtles on around Crowley and Aziraphale's life together.





	The Lovers

**Author's Note:**

> I guess I wasn't quite done with the little world I had made in Tumbling Down. This is a very brief epilogue and, fair warning, it is a lot sadder than I thought it was going to be. Human stuff happens in this. Aziraphale POV. It really wanted to be written, so here it is.
> 
> Inspired quite a bit by "Lover" by Taylor Swift and by Mary Oliver, because I am soft and easily influenced.

There’s a freedom in it he didn’t expect. And for someone like him, who is so used to following rules, meaningless and endless _rules_, the gift Crowley gives him is fathomless. Like kicking off too-tight shoes at the end of the day.

But with Crowley, he never has to put them on again. If he doesn’t want to. And he finds he doesn’t want to.

In the beginning, as a joke, he had picked Crowley up and carried him over the threshold of the green front door. And ever since then, and that night in the garden, it's been theirs equally: home.

He thought it would be lonely, turning his back on Heaven. But instead, their home is warm and full of the thrumming hearts of their friends and, stunningly, even the laughter of children. It’s warm long nights and cold dark windows with a fire that blocks it all out. It’s books and more books and Crowley, tripping over books but not complaining too much, really. A warm hand passing over his head as its owner makes his way to bed. Fairy lights in the garden. A heavy head resting on his chest at night.

Years pass at a blistering rate. Has it always gone so quickly? Children grow up. They move away from Tadfield. They return to the cottage in the South Downs, to Crowley and Aziraphale, periodically - like seafoam swept in on the tide: Adam. Warlock. Wensley and Pepper and Brian. New eyes open: Anathema has a baby, then another. She calls Crowley in the middle of the night, asking for advice. He’s stayed up with a newborn before, after all. The house is full more weekends than not. “More godchildren than we know what to do with,” he hears Crowley tell a neighbor proudly. He catches Aziraphale watching him, smiles over the woman’s head. “Everything we’ve always wanted.”

It is, Aziraphale realizes. It’s _everything_.

Some eyes close forever. They bear up under the losses they are a bit more prepared for: wet eyes, coffee cake, quiet voices and Crowley standing outside the church; surprising, cathartic loud laughter at the reception after, the soft white lounge miracled large enough to hold everyone close together. Madame Tracy stays with them, for a while, after Shadwell goes. She’s the stronger one, Aziraphale points out, so it’s better this way. Crowley agrees with him.

Hearts break. Adam comes to them and sits, silent, in the garden beside Crowley, glasses of whiskey held loosely in their hands. Warlock, by contrast, buries his head in his nanny’s lap and howls. Crowley strokes the straight black hair. Young hearts mend. 

Time hurtles on. 

The Antichrist gets engaged. “What a world,” Crowley says, holding the invitation out for Aziraphale to read. “Lovely old world,” he says again, a crack in his voice that makes Aziraphale walk over and put his arms around the tall demon’s neck.

“Our little boy,” he tries to joke. Crowley laughs roughly, but tears spill out anyway. And he cries again, when Adam asks to have the wedding in his godfathers’ garden.

As the neighborhood turns over, Aziraphale wonders if maybe they, too, should move on before they start raising eyebrows. Crowley is in the garden when Aziraphale raises this point, and he laughs into the soil.

“As if we don’t raise eyebrows already, angel,” he replies.

“You know what I mean,” Aziraphale says. He watches the way Crowley’s shoulders move, fluid, underneath his tight black shirt. 

“This is our home,” Crowley says crossly, rocking back on his heels. “Think about everything we’ve built here. And everything that’s happened here.” Weddings. Parties. Dinners. Aziraphale closes his eyes, feels the love soaked deep into the earth here. He imagines it must go clear through to the other side. 

“Of course, my dear,” he says softly. “What am I thinking of?”

They hold an anniversary party for Newt and Anathema - “it was our first wedding!”, Crowley insists - and Aziraphale is shocked when he realizes her hair is almost all silver now. Their children have scattered across the globe. Her fingers touch the bark of the apple trees. 

“How can it have been forty years already?” Her eyes are still as sharp and liquid as the first time they met her, skidding over the hood of Crowley’s Bentley. 

He holds her hand in his.

“Feels like yesterday,” she speaks against his silence. 

She gets sick a few months later. It happens quickly, too quickly. She gets lighter and lighter, until she fades into the morning sun.

This time, Warlock holds his nanny, whose grief is too much for Aziraphale to manage alone. 

Crowley stares at the wall. His fists are snarled in the sheets, holding on for dear life. Aziraphale touches him softly, between the shoulder blades, and when Crowley whimpers a little he pulls the slender form towards him, tighter, crushing him against his warm chest, wishing he could push the pain out of him. Knowing he can’t.

“I’m so - so - I can’t -” Aziraphale can make the words out, whisperscream against his skin, hot and awful. 

“Hush,” he says, miserably. There’s nothing he can say. Humans die all the time. It doesn’t make it any easier, though, when it’s a human that belongs to _you_. “Oh, Crowley, I know, my darling. I am so sorry, my love.”

“I can’t breathe - I can’t breathe -” but Aziraphale knows he doesn’t want him to let go. “I can’t stand that she’s gone. I’m not ready. I’m not ready, angel.”

“Hush, she’s in a - she’s with the -” he can’t bring himself to finish it. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. It will be no comfort to Crowley. 

“She was my friend,” he sniffles after an eternity of silent, bitter weeping. “Angel, she was my witch.”

Time doesn’t heal. He’s been there himself enough times to know. But it softens. And the girls have her black eyes and her sharp humor and her uncanny knack for knowing what someone’s thinking. The boys have Newt’s guilelessness that made Anathema love him. So she’s still there, after all, in their voices and their fingers. And sometimes Crowley holds himself very still and seems to hear something no one else can hear, in the garden, eyes sliding closed. And he knows she’s there, then, too.

One day comes when there is no one left alive who was there at the end of the world, except for Crowley and for him. It hits him suddenly, barefoot in front of the fire, midwinter cold pressing down on the cottage. They are alone in an empty world that doesn’t remember what they’ve done.

As if he’s gasped aloud, Crowley wakes from his nap on the couch, lifts his head, long red hair falling over his eyes. He shakes the curls back from his face, fixing Aziraphale with those yellow-gold irises which have captivated him for so, so long. They have been everything to each other before. Maybe they can be, again. In this curious new world.

“Alright?”

“Yes, just…” he swallows. “Do you think perhaps now it’s time to move on?” It comes out fast, all in a rush. Because it hurts. 

The cottage hurts, now.

Crowley considers this, considers Aziraphale. An eternity passes between their eyes, gold and blue.

“Angel,” he says slowly. “I would follow you anywhere. You know that by now.”

“And I you, my darling.” He swallows again, drily. “I just…I’m lonely, my love. Don’t you feel it?” Because so much has changed. He, selfishly, can want to be Crowley’s whole world but he can’t replace the people they have both adored. He can’t - won’t - erase their memories. But maybe he can draw the sting, just a bit.

“It’s only - Aziraphale, this is where their feet walked,” Crowley says quietly. “Here in this house, angel. They were all here. We can’t leave them, can we? How can we leave them behind? We were all here together, safe. Don’t ask me to leave them. Don’t ask me to forget them, even for us.” His voice breaks, even though it’s been nearly a century since Crowley first came here.

“Never, my darling, I would never ask that,” he says, voice as soft as a newborn’s cheek. “Of course not. I love them all too. And if you want to stay, Crowley, I’ll stay. Of course. I made that mistake before, and I’m not such a fool to make it again. I’ll go wherever you go. I just thought...maybe a break,” he ends, somewhat weakly. “It’s so _empty_ here, without them.”

“Where would we _go_?”

Aziraphale considers this. Once, Crowley had said they could go anywhere he, Aziraphale, wanted to go. He thinks of the cottage, of the garden. Closes his eyes. He can nearly see them: motes of light, the people they have loved, hovering just beyond where he could touch. 

And Crowley. Thick roots snake out, wrapping around him, anchoring him to this sliver of earth.

How could he ask this of him? After what he put Crowley through, to ask him something like this was as close to sinning as he dared to come.

“You’re right,” Aziraphale says briskly, breaking the tension in the room. Outside, frost creeps up the window panes. “Of course. My darling, when will I learn that you’re always right about these things?” He walks to Crowley’s sofa, sits at his feet, rubs his hands up and down the tense calves, tight as harp strings. “This is our home. Their home. We belong here.”

A long-fingered hand stills his in gratitude. “We could take a holiday,” says his lover, that artfully lazy tone that covers up the deep well of Crowley.

“Anywhere you want to go,” says Aziraphale. Crowley smiles at his long-ago words. 

“We have been happy, haven’t we?” He is plaintive, eyes burning, begging for the truth and for a lie: _yes, of course, we were all happy. Yes, of course, we chose the right thing. This garden, this life, right here._ “And everyone? We were a family. Everyone was happy.”

“You know we have been,” Aziraphale murmurs. “You know how you light me up, Crowley. And I know how much love lives here. Can’t you feel it? Why do you think this house is full, every holiday and every funeral and every birthday? Because of you, you daft silly creature. We’ll stay. Of course we’ll stay. Forever, if you like.”

The world is so big, but it’s nothing without Crowley. He’s seen more than his share of it.

“Ngk,” Crowley says, eyes shadowed as Aziraphale strokes his cheek.

“We all love you so, darling” the angel whispers. His eyes are far away. 

“I think of each life as a flower,” Crowley quotes. Aziraphale is surprised for a moment, because it's not like Crowley to quote poetry. It comes swimming to him from over the years: a reading from a funeral, one that wasn't in a church but instead was under a wild, gray sky. 

He does not reply, and Crowley doesn’t finish the stanza. _Tending towards silence_, isn't that how it goes? But not here. _We can hear them, here in our garden, can’t we - all of those beautiful creatures who came before us?_

_We love you so_, the memories whisper against the windows. Aziraphale hears them, even if Crowley can’t. _Remember us. Know us. Let us place our apple in your hand._

He kisses Crowley, who smiles absently, fondly. Aziraphale won’t ask him again for something he can’t give. He’s been giving of himself for so long already. Let him keep this cottage and these ghosts. _And me._

This time, Crowley leans up. Crowley kisses him.

Forever and ever.


End file.
